


Thorki Ficlets

by mrhiddles



Category: Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Blow Jobs, Bottom Thor, Ficlet Collection, Implied Mpreg, Jötunn Loki, M/M, Masturbation, Sexual Content, Voyeurism, fluff at points, insert other random tags here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 15:10:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 21,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/800113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrhiddles/pseuds/mrhiddles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An ongoing collection of prompts filled from Tumblr. All Thorki. Not everything is sex. More will be added in the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Late Night In

Prompt by [Fahrlight](http://fahrlight.tumblr.com/): "Loki is a hooker, Thor is a biker."

\--

Some nights demanded iron to be smelted and steel shaped, other nights demanded long rides on roads free of traffic and drunks that stayed out too late. Most nights demanded beer.

Thor usually found his time spent on rewiring bikes and cleaning engines, fitting tires and painting small designs for a price. His shop closed early but he liked staying until his arms burned from shuffling bike parts around. Then he’d test the finished bikes out, ride around for a few hours on empty streets. It was a peaceful job. Easy. Lucrative too.

Somehow, between a drunk night in with Clint and Tony, a slogan was coined; We deliver the thunder. It sounded cheesy as hell to him, but it brought in tourists, and inevitably made him more money, so Thor never complained. He was content. A little bored, but content.

It’s his birthday when Tony surprises him. _Really_ surprises him.

It’s just past midnight when a knock rings through on the glass door of his shop. Thor sees Steve throw Tony a glare that says a lot more than it should, because Thor knows Tony. And Tony is beaming. Clint is smirking in the far corner, pausing on his pizza.

Tony claps a hand on his shoulder, so much higher than his own, and Thor says in warning, “Tony. What did you do?”

“It’s all paid for, don’t worry about it. You’ll kiss me in the morning, trust me.”

Thor doesn’t trust him.

When he unlocks the door with a blind key and swings it wide, he sighs, thankful. He tells the man standing there, “Shop’s closed for the night, come back—”

The man, nearly tall as him, skinny and pale with a dark wash of hair and bright eyes, smirks. “Stark told me you wouldn’t believe it.”

Thor whirls on Tony, who is shooing everyone out just as the stranger steps inside, shrugging off his coat and never taking his eyes from Thor.

Tony says, “Have fun.” And the door chimes on their way out. He frowns when he sees they’ve taken the pizza.

Thor is too tired and just on the edge of too drunk for this. He says, “Who are—”

“Does it matter?” And the man is right before him, teeth white in a grin that Thor would dub vicious. Hands light on his sides and he shivers. It makes his stomach roll.

“What—” But the stranger is too close then, in his space, and Thor knows he should push him away, call Tony, yell at him until he comes back here so he can punch him to high hell. But then the stranger’s mouth is on his neck, hands working quick first on his shirt, then his belt and he can’t really think anymore.

He grasps onto the thought of _How did Tony know?_ just before a hand wraps tight around his cock and his pants find their way around his knees.

“You—Your name,” he breathes harsh into the air as the other kisses his way along Thor’s chest. It’s been so long he can hardly catch his breath.

“My name is Loki,” he says, before taking Thor into his mouth and sucking.

In the morning Tony and Clint meet Thor for work and while Clint stares at the large bruises peeking out from just beneath the collar of his shirt, Tony just laughs to himself all day.


	2. Voyeur

Prompt by [your-friendlyneighborhoodanon](http://your-friendlyneighborhoodanon.tumblr.com/): "Loki was alone. He was always alone, trapped like an insect in this unbreakable cage. So he didn't bother to hide it when he pleasured himself. Since no one could see or hear him, what matter whose name he called out as he came? If Thor hadn't paused in the doorway where Loki couldn't see him rather than storming in, he never would have known."

\--

Gold could be forged. Into cities, into prisons. To Thor, the gold of Asgard made a home. But to Loki, who sat in tatters endless miles beneath this home, Asgard was a prison. A twisting, beautiful, vile prison.

Thor knew somewhere in the back of his mind that Loki equated him with Asgard, with his disgust in Odin and careful evasiveness of Frigga. Thor was Loki’s prison. For years he didn’t know what to do with this revelation. The fear of it. The hopelessness. For he was Thor, the ever golden, the brave, the inspiring, the undefeated. Thor was the gold to Loki’s darkness and in this, in his imprisonment, he sought his brother.

In this, he first heard Loki breathe his name.

—

The days were immeasurable when caged beneath stone and river and sun, hidden away from the sky and it’s watchers like an insect meant to be crushed. Here, it was all fabricated pleasantness. The books, the candles, the open space with its plush furs. At least here, they did not force him to wear the facade of clean clothes and clean-cut appearances. His one rebellion. His one mischief achieved without the aid of magic. Not even Odin could force him into a costume more physical than the one of pale skin and green eyes.

He sought to annoy the guards at first. To rouse them from their impenetrable watch. Surely they were not so immoveable as loyal Heimdall?

But all Loki did was manage to twist his fingers raw from weaving magic that was barred from him by Odin’s learned hand and ever clever tongue ages more ancient than even Loki’s. Than chaos itself. Loki yelled his voice hoarse next.

He grew bored for many long nights, what he thought were nights. There was no time here. He received a constant stream of meals throughout the day, small feasts even Volstagg would be willing to eye. Thor did not come.

Thor never came. It was curious.

So he suspected the prison was proofed in every manner. So clever, he thought of Odin, to render his fallen Jotun bastard invisible, though so near to others.

His mind soon turned to other needs, and it was in this thin cognitive thread of _safe, lied to, invisible_ that he first bared himself to his hand. That he did not bother hiding the sounds he made. He was tired of being denied them besides. Let his voice be heard by all, and yet hidden.

And the guards were none the wiser. It was perverse, he knew. But this was not a recent thing. This was carefully made. Loki had become himself, and in this, small mischief, he was perverse indeed.

It was on the third, the twentieth, the unfathomably measured day that he first breathed Thor’s name.

Loki could no longer tell for it felt like he was rending thunder itself silent.

—

Thor visits Loki every morning and every night. Twice a day does he suffer the curse of that prison’s threshold, into Loki’s line of sight, but all he can bring himself to step to is the very edge. In the dark, behind the cell. The guards have taken vows of silence after Loki’s fall and will only speak when they shout their cries of battle. Or unless something very dire indeed has occurred. They are ghosts in a golden hall and Thor is thankful for this, for they do not speak of his visits. His endless hours spent fighting within himself on whether to cross that line or not.

Thor cannot bring himself to speak to Loki. He fears if he hears his voice he will either weep or bring Mjolnir down upon the cage of Loki’s ribs. Silence rendered from the shame of the love he still holds for Loki, or silence rendered by Loki’s death. Either or, it is not a good place to be caught.

It is on the ninth month he hears Loki speak anything other than failed attempts at charms and curses and cruel, vicious insults and threats. Nine months and Thor hears his name on his brother’s lips and oh, it is a dangerous thing there coiling in his chest.

And when Loki cries out in a way that tells Thor exactly what it is he is not seeing, something dark and languid and wrong snaps apart in the deepest part of himself.

—

Loki goes on believing he is unheard, unseen, even when it is Thor himself who spies on his cries as he spends on his hand, again and again, night after night. Eventually something breaks and he knows there is a part of him that wants, that desires. Something so twisted inside him that somehow it makes sense. Loki is alright with that. Some nights are so long, tears slip by unnoticed, and he is shamed by them. But who can see them?

Thor stands in the corner, shadowed and invisible to Loki only.

—

Thor manages his way before Loki’s cell one year after he first heard Loki breathe his name on a sigh of pleasure. Loki’s eyes are wide, honest shock playing bright across his face.

Thor commands the guards leave them that night, and Thor knows in Loki’s growing smirk that it is a secret they will share for many long centuries yet.


	3. Storm Uncalled For

Prompt by [mommalokiofasgard](http://mommalokiofasgard.tumblr.com/): "Writing prompts you say? Hmm... I see a lack of Thorki mpreg fluffiness on my dash. That or just some smut lol!"

\--

Loki avoids him for two months.

Thor looks for him everywhere. He ventures into the libraries of Asgard, Vanaheim, even Alfheim. Loki spies him heading to Heimdall and chewing on his lower lip, just waiting to ask what Loki knows would be next to his simple mind. Jotunheim. Leave it to Thor, son of Odin, heir to Asgard, to think his Jotun mate would be in the throes of his own kingdom. A kingdom that forgot him the moment the war was lost.

There are sporadic thunderstorms as the days pass and once it strikes the ground he passes, so Loki chooses to stay indoors most days.

He spends his time with Frigga. He thinks she knows, with her ever watchful gaze and kind smile. Knowing, it tells him. She knows. Or suspects.

Loki doesn’t know if Asgard has ever bred a Jotun before, but surely, this is one for the books. Heir to Asgard, impregnates bride won in war. It is laughable.

But still, Frigga, the queen, the Allmother, smiles at him just as she always has.

It makes something long lost within himself crack and _hurt_ , and he doesn’t know what to do with it. But he smiles back, and promises her he will go to Thor, at her behest.

Loki is afraid for the first time in a very long century. And he now shares a bed with famed rage and even greater lust.

He worries Thor, for all his fool kindness, will want _more_.

Loki will not let him.

—

It is late and he is tired when Thor finally catches him. He is sitting on the edge of a large overhang, stone pillars high beside them. Thor comes up behind him, brushes fingers over his sides.

“Found you, my iceling.”

Loki sighs, debating the use of running off and hiding again, but it would be a waste of energy and he has little enough as it is. Too much time spent pondering the years to come.

“Hello.”

Thor kisses his shoulder, then his neck. They are easy, open kisses, and Loki has since grown used to them in the years he’d been made to marry him. Loki does not mind.

Thor settles his chin in the bend of his neck. “It has been a long few weeks without you, I was wondering where next to look for you.”

“Aye.”

Thor nuzzles his neck, trying to coax the words from him, but Loki won’t give them up. He is tense in Thor’s hold and he knows it.

“You know,” Thor starts, “I wondered when you would show yourself. I thought you were about to let me march into Jotunheim alone.”

Loki scoffs and is speaking before he can willfully halt the words. “Never alone, Thor.”

Thor gives him a proper kiss and comes to stand before him, so he can see his eyes. Thor always had this searching look about him, and whether he knew it or not, it drove Loki mad to no end.

Loki swings his legs up and comes to stand before Thor, nearly matching his height. It’s times like this he would flick his braid back over his shoulders, to toy with as it swung near his navel. His fingers even twitch with the muscle memory of it. But he’d cut it long ago, and those days were past.

As if knowing his thoughts, Thor fingers a lock of dark hair tucked behind his ear. “You should grow it again. I do miss it.”

“Ha, you miss the wildness of it.” Loki is walking into their shared chambers, gut twisting with nerves from the inevitable.

“Perhaps,” Thor says, following after him.

Somewhere behind them there is the distant boom of thunder and Loki looks back to Thor, brow raised. But Thor is worrying his lip between anxious teeth.

“You are troubled.” And it sounds choked, how he says it.

Thor doesn’t notice. He’s sitting on the bed now. “It is nothing, Loki. Do not worry yourself over it…”

“Then I will not.” And when Loki sees Thor realign himself on the bed, tugging off his tunic, Loki whispers the runes needed to snuff the light, then readies himself for sleep. He slips out of his clothes and climbs in beneath the furs and cotton, preferring Thor’s body heat to the cold of Asgard’s night. Thor thinks it affects him, that he needs Thor’s heat.

It still amuses him how Thor knows so little of Jotnar.

When his arms find the familiar span of Thor’s shoulders, and the line of their bodies are pressed close, Thor breathes him in, nose buried in his hair. A hand finds its way to his neck and rubs soothingly. It relaxes his panicked heartbeat, and he can breathe easier for it. And Loki hates that. He hates that Thor can do that to him, for him, so easily.

He presses tighter, hoping to cut off what little air he must have in the close heat of Loki’s hair and skin, and almost in reply, thunder rolls once more.

There is a startled snort, none too graceful, from where Thor is settled before him, and he goes so still Loki is finally forced to pull back and meet his eyes.

The fear is there again. And Thor’s eyes are wide.

“Loki, you—”

Before he can say anything else, Loki is whispering, “I am sorry, Thor, husband, I am so sorry I—”

Thor pulls away and Loki feels something like terror thread its way into existence inside him, but all Thor does is raise a hand to his stomach. He presses firm, a solid, warm weight, and the action feels awkward. Foreign. Loki wants to squirm, but he remains still.

Then Thor is murmuring, “I was curious about those thunder storms…”

A word hovers on the edge of his usually silver tongue, but Loki cannot bring himself to say it. Instead what bursts forth is a hitched sound and then Thor meets his eyes again.

He seems concerned, surprised. “Loki, why are you crying?”

Loki jolts, because Thor touches his face, so gently. And he _is_ crying, and oh, what a fool he is for it. He jerks his head, making to be away from the trap of Thor’s warm body and far-reaching embrace.

Thor hugs Loki to him, and in the nude like he is, there is nothing he can do to escape it. Thor kisses him, and it’s so much better than his rage, his temper, his hatred, and Loki feels it break apart inside him and he sobs.


	4. Promise

Prompt by [pyrebomb](http://pyrebomb.tumblr.com/): "I feel guilty even asking since I still owe you an RP post and podfic. Feel free to smack me, but... bottom!Thor? (lol you knew I'd prompt this, right?)"

\--

It’s been an hour and Loki has not let go of his hair.

And his release has still not reached him. His mouth is dry from the ache of it, cloying at the weight hanging between his legs and searing where Loki seeks to drive into him, so slowly from behind. He does all but drive home, and it is driving Thor to rage.

“Beg, oh brother,” Loki taunts, tugging back on the fistful of blond hair in his grasp. Thor lets loose a roar and shoves his hips back savagely when Loki pulls out. The cool air greets him like an open wound.

He reaches to tear at Loki, but then he is met with a mouthful of linen. Loki shoves his face into the sheets and they’re dirty and smell of Midgard. He wishes he were anywhere but.

“Loki, cease this endless taunting—”

He can feel Loki nudge the back of his thigh, where he leans over him. His grip is almost suffocating but he does not relent because he knows Thor can take it.

“Never, _brother_ ,” he hisses into Thor’s ear. “You like it. You enjoy this.”

And when Thor twists, Loki enters him once more, filling him until the breath is forced from his lungs regardless of any words he would have summoned. Loki finally moves like he means to finish this, and oh, how Thor has waited.

Thor bites back the moan that tears through him, making it come out as a husky shade of a groan. Loki laughs into the crown of his hair, and jerks his hips so hard it has Thor blinking back tears.

He would have Loki next. On his belly, void of any pleasure as Thor thrust into him again and again, taking what Loki refused him for so long. He would gag him too, on the meat of his palm, or the shrug of his own cape. Because he knows Loki would laugh through it. He would laugh and work the curve of his backside into the bowl of his hips and milk Thor all the while calling him brother. Mocking him always.

Loki reaches down and takes him in his hand, hot, aching, flushed flesh and squeezes until it hurts. He does not stroke, he does not twist, he simply holds and squeezes and it’s like keeping air from him.

“Your cock is heavy, Thor. Why might that be?” He hums into his hair, and Thor feels the vibration of it through his neck, his scalp.

“Faster, curse you,” Thor stutters into the sheets. Loki makes a sound like surprise, and Thor bites his tongue for it. He can taste blood.

Loki goes still and Thor swears he could tear his brother’s head from his shoulders right then and there.

“Repeat that just once more, please.” Loki pulls on his hair until his neck strains and Thor curses him truly. “Oh, for all that mighty thunder pouring from your lips, there is still yet more trapped in your rod.” The pun is not lost on him and he bucks once more, wanting control, but allowing it when Loki pushes him back down into the bed.

Thor spits out an angry promise, “I will ruin you for this. Tonight, when you are on the edge of sleep, I will wake you with—”

Loki strokes him, once, slow, and Thor tries to keep from moving with it. His words leave him instantly.

Loki nuzzles his neck, breathing deep and muttering. Thor doesn’t understand what he’s saying. But he’s moving again, and his hand too, so Thor let’s it be. So long as Loki is not talking, he can enjoy it.

Loki shudders above him, and then his hair is being tugged for another reason entire. He presses close, cheek against Thor’s temple, and Thor can feel him whisper his name. Thor reaches back, curls his spine with the motion of Loki’s body, and squeezes his thigh. Loki falls atop him, losing control for but a moment, and then his hair is free and Loki is holding his neck.

“ _Brother_ ,” he says, hips stuttering. Thor knows it for what it is.

Thor spills in Loki’s hand just after Loki does, heat spearing him and painting the line of his legs.

Hours later, he keeps his promise.


	5. Hunting

Prompt by [heave-my-heart](http://heave-my-heart.tumblr.com/): "Thor gets injured on a hunting trip and cannot be moved, Sif leaves to get help, Loki stays behind and tells him ancient stories and tales from their youth to keep him distracted."

\--

The way it happens is Thor gets angry, charges the largest bear Loki has ever seen and is now bleeding from long, angry gashes Sif could hardly staunch.

Loki made sure the bear was truly dead, past the blow to the head dealt by Thor’s hammer, before turning and assessing the state of his brother.

He’s bleeding too quickly and Sif is covered in red up to her elbows. She’s calm, given everything, but Loki can see the panic of her failed attempts start seeping in. Her hands shake where they press firm atop Thor’s wounds.

Loki bent and makes to take her spot, slightly shoving her in the process. He doesn’t care, and she doesn’t say anything for it, only glares. But her focus is on Thor, and when she whispers Thor’s name, her voice wavers.

Loki takes a knife from the strap along his arm and cuts what remains of Thor’s chest armor to pieces, ripping the discs away and tossing them. Thor is groaning, the pain of it making him squirm as Loki tries to get a grip on him. Green light hedges at the tips of Loki’s fingers as he shoves Thor back down, hands atop the gashes and fingers nearly inside them. Thor cries out in a way Loki’s sure he would be ashamed for in any other situation, but as it was, he was out of it.

“Return to Asgard. Bring Eir,” Loki rasps, concentrating his magic into the wound. Thor says his name, a weak thing.

“Can you not help him?” Sif asks him, her voice hard.

Loki fights to keep the anger from his voice, but it’s still noticeable, “I am no healer! Go, quickly, before I fail at what little I _can_ do.”

Sif spares a last lingering look at Thor before turning and running further into the forest. Loki knew it would take hours to return to Asgard, and yet more to track their way back to them. But he can at least stop the bleeding, and so he focuses hard on that alone.

It is well into night when Thor finally stops moving around, relenting under Loki’s prodding touch and allowing the magic to do its work.

Thor is breathing heavily, but he is quiet through it. Loki is so focused on his work that he startles when a hand grazes his side.

“Brother…”

Loki glances at Thor’s face. His skin has the sheen of sweat and he’s splotchy with dirt and dried blood. But his eyes are clearer than they had been, and he no longer looked to be on the edge of death.

His fingers find a resting place in a loop of the belt Loki wore, and he is watching Loki now. “Where is Sif?”

Loki swallows. “She is to Asgard to bring help.”

“Why not call Heimdall?” Thor asks, voice gruff. He tries to clear his throat and ends up hitching a pained grunt because of it. Loki edges a careful hand to place it on Thor’s sternum, an act of calming him more than anything. His heart is an erratic beat beneath his palm.

Because I wanted peace to tend to you, is what he thinks, but he says, “She was running to the horses before I could.” He licks his lips and tilts his head when Thor just stares up at him. It prompts a bit of the truth to his lips. “I do not know what would have happened had I taken my hands from you. You were bleeding so much, Thor…”

“Not so much now. Because you stayed.” Thor’s voice sounds odd, but Loki doesn’t comment on it. He keeps his eyes on his bloody hands.

“If I remove my hands it will be as if I did nothing at all.” He shrugs and Thor pulls slightly on his belt.

He tries sitting up but Loki holds him down. Thor frowns. “I am stiff, let me at least sit up.”

“No, you idiot. You will die.”

Thor gives a very gruff chuckle at that, and coughs after. He rises to his elbows, and Loki puts forth more magic, curling a lip at his brother.

Thor says, “You are always so dire. I will be fine, just let me rest for a while,” he pauses, swallowing and says more quietly, “Can you not keep your hands upon my chest if I lay between your legs?”

Loki snorts, considering it. Finally, his throat working, he says, “That is doable.”

It took a while, but with some maneuvering Thor was lying with his head on Loki’s chest, his legs stretched out before him with Loki’s legs beside his. Loki keeps a steady thrum of threading magic spreading through the wound, and when Thor places his hands over Loki’s, he smiles a little.

They have not done this since they were children. Thor now bore the grizzled marks of battle and the muscle earned from many long years of fighting. He had the gaze of a man who lived many lives, just as Loki did. Just as Loki now had the wisdom of ancient magic and kept the weight of dark secrets upon his shoulders.

“Do you remember when we were children, brother?” Thor asks, when the stars begin to spark into life above.

“Of course I do,” Loki replies, so soft.

Thor’s thumbs rub circles along his wrists and Loki feels a shiver travel the length of his spine. “Will you tell me of the adventures we shared?”

It is almost innocent, the way Thor asks it. And it was so different from the tired annoyance Loki was so used to from him, that he immediately felt the inclination to oblige. If only for tonight. If only to keep Thor’s mind from the pain.

“This was supposed to be a simple hunting trip,” he sighs.

Thor said, “Please, brother.”

And so Loki began.

“When I was very young and still swaddled in fur, you asked to carry me. You dropped me. Mother scolded you.”

“I did not!” Thor says, shock evident in his voice. He tries to get a look at Loki but Loki feels blood seep so he stills him by placing his chin atop the crown of gold that tickles at his collar. Thor huffs through his nose. “I would never drop you.”

“You did. Mother said I cried for days.” He smiles, amused at Thor’s reaction.

“You’re lying. How could you still remember such a thing for being so small when it happened?”

Loki just laughs, and Thor pinches the top of his hand.

“Fine, fine, I will remind you instead of the time you took a bottle of ground sulfuric ash from Muspelheim I’d had saved and used it as seasoning for a meal.”

“You told me it was pepper from Alfheim.”

“You didn’t seem to notice the difference, actually. I was rather disappointed.”

Thor shakes his head and Loki can practically feel his frown. “Perhaps I was wrong to ask for stories from our childhood.”

Loki notices him take a sharp breath as he moves a bit, and applies more soothing magic, whispering runes above him like a low chant. Thor sighs.

“Remember when you were shy at the prospect of girls?” Loki mutters after some time. He can see the edges of Thor’s mouth stretch and knows he is smiling. “You came to me and hid in my room as I practiced runes, because you were afraid they wanted to kiss you.”

“They did, I was happy to find.”

Loki snorts, shuffling strands of gold. “Please, you were terrified. I distinctly remember your hands shaking and your nose running you were so nervous.”

“I was a child, Loki. You must remember how it had been.”

Loki did. He also remembers how Thor once snuck into his bed and wrapped an arm about his waste and pulled him close. Just after their rooms had been separated. A momentary lapse in adolescent bravery, because he missed his brother. It was only once, but it had stayed a prominent memory in Loki’s mind for centuries.

“Another time we journeyed to Svartalfheim. Do you remember that, Thor? They were so welcoming.”

Thor sniffs and adjusts his hold on Loki’s hands. Loki feels the swell of his chest as he does. “Ha, they were a right bunch. They screamed at me in elvish that one night, for bedding just one of their women.”

“If I remember, you touched her ears.”

“…I was curious.”

Loki laughs truly, tongue sticking between his teeth, something he’d always been conscious of. It has Thor laughing lightly in moments.

Thor says, “Our first hunting trip was unlike this one.”

“Yes, for we managed to return with nothing but a string of cod.”

“Oh, father was displeased,” Thor breathes, grimacing with the memory. “But it was nice. I miss those days. It was why I suggested we do this.”

“With Sif as well?” Loki says, the words foul on his tongue.

“You only recently restored her hair, I thought it could be a chance to make peace.”

“There is no peace amongst us, not that there ever was. You are yet in the center of both our lives.”

“Loki…”

Loki changes the subject before his traitorous tongue can let loose any other secret ponderings. “I remember when we battled Thiazi’s Jotun army. They wore lightning on their backs as Mjolnir does, and they singed a fine cloak I fancied before I managed to kill three of them for it.”

Thor was silent, listening. His grip on Loki’s hands tightens and loosens, and Loki notices how he rubs idle patterns with his thumbs.

“You were magnificent,” Loki whispers and he can hear Thor’s small intake of breath. “You raised that hammer as they swarmed and called down beams of twisting fire. I still haven’t seen a thing like it.”

“We would have died had I not.”

“It was no less impressive for it.”

Thor is quiet for a long time. Loki closes his eyes, concentrates on the flow of runework through his fingers and into Thor as he breathes atop his head, smelling the rich scent of thunder and earth and everything so innately _Thor_.

Finally, Thor says, “If I did not know you for my brother, I would think you were complimenting me.”

Loki does not open his eyes. He focuses the magic into one hand and raises his other to Thor’s other shoulder, embracing him as tightly as he dares. It will only happen once.

“Tonight you are alive, and I will let you have it for what it is.”

Let it be as it once was and then not at all.


	6. Marked

Anonymous asked: "Loki magically marks his name on Thor like a tramp stamp."

\--

It is dark and the moon hangs full and bright above them when Loki burns his name into Thor’s flesh.

Thin, curving runes that seem to take forever. Like a dragging whip, scorching through skin and immortal blood and wanting at the bone beneath. But Thor endures it, because this is Loki’s desire, this is his brother’s final want, and he would fulfill it. No matter the cost.

He won’t see Loki again after this.

Loki’s fingers trace the blood in small circles, slick and warm against the final knob of his spine. It’s just to the side, over the swell of his rear and hovers beneath the gracious space of his ribs.

Loki breathes against his neck and it’s nearly cold.

“You will remember this, won’t you?”

Thor feels his eyes ache but he closes them, refusing the world. Loki is a weight against his side and he would feel him, this one last night.

“Always, brother. Loki, always.”

Loki laughs quiet into his hair. Presses his lips to Thor’s neck.

“You are forever the fool,” he whispers.

In the morning Thor’s skin feels stretched too tight and Loki is gone.


	7. Saved

Anonymous asked: "Thorki ficlet prompt: Some Asgardians give Loki a hard time. Protective Thor comes bursting in to save the day. Somehow, Loki ends up saving his ass instead."

\--

Thor found Loki bleeding with his knuckles split and bruised. Thor finds him surrounded by five others with magic sputtering at his fingertips, failing him.

They’re boys, and this has happened too often for Thor to warrant a peaceable retreat. He takes the first boy by the neck and throws him to the ground, not caring at the sound of skull thudding against stone. He cries out but Thor is already going for the next.

Loki is a trembling form before him, slowly rising to his feet and steadying himself, watching with quick, viper eyes as Thor punches the second boy in his nose. Blood rushes forth and Loki calls Thor’s name.

Thor turns, thinking the other three are going for Loki once more, but then he’s tossed to the ground. A knee presses heavily into his side, another pinning his throat. And it doesn’t matter that he’s Thor, that Loki is Loki, that they are princes of Asgard destined to be Kings. They are only children now, in pain and fighting to _breathe_ —

It’s when the punches and kicks begin to blur and his arms begin to shake from the effort of trying to shove the three of them from his body that green light bursts at the edges of his sight. One boy gives a shout and then the weight atop him is significantly less.

Loki heaves a cry and a monstrous shade Thor had seen him practice in their gardens is summoned, scaring the fourth boy completely off Thor. The fifth Thor grabs by the collar, tossing him aside and slamming face first to the ground.

There is an impressive muttering of runes beneath Loki’s breath and then a careful twist of his arms and Thor sees a copy of his brother appear over the fifth boy. He’s rising to a stand himself and when he sees Loki there, fear widens his gaze and a string of apologies rush out. He runs and the clone vanishes.

Thor turns to his brother, ignoring his own pains and aches and grabs up his hands. Loki begins to pull away, but Thor holds fast. He measures the injuries and then gazes at the rest of him, gauging what other harms have been wrought upon him.

But Loki shrugs and says, “I am fine. You are bleeding quite a lot though…”

Loki raises his hands to Thor’s face once he finally relaxes his grip, and stills when Loki whispers yet more magic. A tingle inches beneath his skin and he wants to itch at it. Loki elbows his searching hands away.

“I am slowing the bleeding, but you need to go to Eir.” Loki presses a kiss to his brow, and leads Thor, shocked into silence, to where they will find the healer.


	8. Engagement

Prompt by [ayonoi](http://ayonoi.tumblr.com/): "Prompt: Thor goes to Jotunheim to spend time with his fiance, Loki. They meet under the watchful eyes of Loki's sire. Thor holds hands with Loki despite the fact that he rather kiss him XD. Poor Thor."

\--

It has been a year since Thor has seen the Jotun promised him, and though immortal engagements are long, he is pleased to see Loki has only grown more beautiful.

He is shocked with the ferocity of it. How it hits him, deep in his chest, his groin. His mouth goes dry and he wants to taste the ash blue skin metres apart from his own. But he cannot, not just yet.

Loki inclines his head, bows shallowly in a way any other party would receive as rude if it were not how Thor knew Loki to be. The ice around them reflects light in a thousand ways and plays a special sort of theatre in the glint of Loki’s eyes. He has barely interacted with Jotunheim’s prince, and yet he has gathered small details over the years. Three decades of youth maturing, an engagement solidifying, and he barely knows Loki at all, while knowing nearly everything.

Loki is neat, clever, learned, and mean. He has a kind violence about his tongue and smile, one that lures and then bites, and Thor has fallen for every inch of it. He wishes to know how the sweat of his skin in the morning will smell pressed to his, he wants to know the tang of his seed on his tongue, the spread of it between their bellies.

Loki is greeted by Odin, who takes his hand and presents him to Thor, who takes the palm of his would-be husband gently. So gently. Loki spares him a small smile. He feels sweat collect along the dip of his back beneath the armor he wears, and hopes his face is not mirroring his nerves. So rare, this phenomenon. A year, hardly any time apart at all and yet he feels a child in the presence of a beautiful woman.

Though Loki is no woman, and he moves to hook his arm through Thor’s and leans close enough that Thor can feel the fan of his breath flit across his wrist.

“I have missed you,” Thor says.

Loki leans into him, the smile turning more genuine before disappearing completely.

Laufey stands before the dais of the throne that Odin once sought to ravage, watching Thor and his son with red, red eyes. He is more severe a Jotun than Thor has ever met, and he knows if the war had continued as it had in his youth, he could possibly have died with those two red eyes as the last he saw.

But it is peace time now, and he has the crown prince of Jotunheim gathered close to his side, and he knows, he _knows_ this is right.

“I trust this engagement has withstood the time of decades long enough, Aesir lord.”

Odin raises his chin in a nod of superiority he could never relinquish. Thor can see Laufey tense his jaw.

He feels the nerve of his forearm twitch and Loki presses tighter beside him, a warmth despite the coolness of his skin.

He wants to drag his lips over Loki’s neck, press them to the height of his cheekbones and the curve of his smooth jaw. He wants to trace the lines of his tribal markings with the edge of his tongue and make Loki cry his name as salt traces warm down his cheeks.

Thor wants everything of Loki, and he fears it is not the same for him.

But then Loki tilts his head to him, laces their fingers together under the scarlet stare of Laufey and whispers so only Thor can hear, “I would have your tongue on me as your eyes ever are.”

Thor swallows and feels the heat spread like fire up through his spine, to his face, and he can no longer hold Laufey’s stare.

“Loki, please…”

As Odin, to Thor’s surprise, announces the date of the ceremony, Loki’s bright, lovely laugh fills his ears.

The ice rings coldly as the sound bounces around the dark dome of its ribs.


	9. Change

An anon asked for a vampire/werewolf AU a while ago, but I had already started planning on doing a multichaptered Thorki vampire AU in the near future (I even bought a couple books on the mythology of them recently.) so I wrote a small drabble instead. 

\--

There is a plateau of steel, spreading wide beneath him. A bundle of glass lies beside in a tin made of iron and they reek with the stale blood of the dead.

His voice is a whisper, like always. Something secret and revered. A prayer to black blood gone sour under a full moon’s weight.

It burns his tongue and he wants it away from him.

The other’s words filter through the battle haze of his frenzied mind and he hears him, well and truly.

“I could pull your ribs out, one after another. Like you are.”

He inhales and the scent is sharp against his tongue.

“Like this, my valiant Thor, I could lick you clean.”

Thor shuts his eyes. The careful dark a veil for his sensitive sight.

“I could change your very nature.”

Bone-light, thin fingers curl in layering strength until the skin of his wrist pinches tight. Thor feels his voice fail him before it even finds the will to break free from his throat.

“Change everything,” Loki says into the blood slick skin of his throat.

Thor is dying and Loki has his teeth hovering over his pulse.

Waiting.

Waiting.


	10. Experiment

Prompt by anonymous: "Not sure how kinky you like your prompts, but... Prompt! Thor has been a glutton in the mead halls and ends up suffering for his excess. Rather than go to the overly clinical healers, he appeals to wise Loki to remedy his discomfort. Rather embarrassing and intimate side effects of the cleansing result in bedroom shenanigans."

\--

It’s done in the name of fun, when Loki mixes a certain spice with a bit of magic in the horn of mead he passes to Thor.

When the first sip of thick, laced mead passes Thor’s lips, Loki grins. Sharp-toothed and wolfish.

Thor drinks enough to shame any who claim themselves a patron of wine or any sort of drink in all the many universes that branch from Yggdrasil’s leaves. He is laughing childishly after the fourth barrel and stumbling after the tenth.

To Loki’s great pleasure, Thor manages to insult Sif, Eir, Tyr, and Balder – to his infantile bafflement – by the end of the night. Loki laughs at their expressions as the night goes on, as they struggle to make excuses for Thor’s behavior. He is a boisterous drunk, but rarely does he drink so much to openly insult his lover, a god of war, and someone who is as a brother to him.

Loki laughs at them all, loudly.

Those left, few due to the hour and the chaos of the celebration of another loving day bathed in Asgardian sunshine, drift away. Their goodbyes are either murmured or slurred, and it is clear to Loki he is one of perhaps three that are left almost entirely sober by the nights end.

Thor on the other hand, is scowling, drawling, and can barely keep to his feet. It is obvious, what with Loki being his doting, loyal brother, that he is the one entrusted to see Thor to his chambers unencumbered. Without shame.

Loki will make sure the journey is anything but.

—

Loki is nearly dragging Thor at the end of it, when he finally reaches Thor’s door. It’s intricate and laced with careful goldwork and rather than fumble with the carved lockwork Loki simply magicks it open. He hauls Thor inside and tugs his useless form to the bed.

Thor smells of mead and sweat and the tang of seidr only Loki is privy to. He wishes Thor had not such an inclination towards sleep when he drank, or the night would go on much longer. Loki will only have to try again, and he was planning on making a larger dose to slip into Thor’s drink some weeks from now. Too soon and he would be found out, one way or another.

He sighs, enjoying his victory, no matter how slight, and begins to turn to head out.

Thor grabs Loki’s wrist, and tugs him back with enough force to make him have to catch himself on the bedpost.

“Thor, what in the Nine are you doing?”

Thor is turned onto his stomach, his face buried into his pillow just so that Loki can see one heavy lidded hazy blue eye peer at him beneath the spread of messy blond strands. Loki has the strangest urge to move the hair away, but he refrains.

“Sit with me,” Thor says. And it’s quiet, murmured on a breath low enough to make Loki strain to hear the words.

Thor tugs once more and Loki has no choice but to relent, sitting on the edge. Thor’s hand does not pull away, it merely loosens enough to skim up over his elbow, fingers running over his knives in the straps at his bicep before edging at the collar of his tunic. Thor’s hands are those of a fumbling drunk, prodding and pinching, and it makes Loki’s heart beat a little faster.

“I am hot, brother,” Thor says, voice muffled.

Curious about the effects of his little trick, Loki leans forward, ignoring the way Thor’s hand rests over the curve of his neck. Thor turns his head enough so Loki can see him. He notices Thor’s forehead has a sheen to it, his eyes are slightly red, his lips dry.

“You are feverish,” Loki says with a hidden glee. He frowns and tells Thor, “You should visit Eir.”

Thor mumbles words Loki cannot discern. He waits, not trusting his happy tongue to speak, for he worries he would give himself away.

“She hates me.” Thor scrunches his eyes shut, looks like he’s about to weep like a small boy. Loki wonders at it.

“She is still the Royal healer.”

“No,” Thor says, voice a bit more clear and demanding. Loki raises a brow. “Just, just..Loki will you help? I don’t know—I don’t…what is this—”

Loki doesn’t answer until Thor whispers _please_. He shifts into the furs and pillows beneath him and Loki only nods, watching it all.

“Are you in pain?” Loki asks, because he doesn’t know what side effects would happen, and that now they have extended well past a few hours only, he isn’t sure it was as successful as he’d wanted it to be. If it continued well past this night, he would have to explain eventually, and it would only be more difficult to reproduce in the future.

And when Thor scrunches his nose, his brows drawing together, eyes squinting, Loki asks him to turn onto his back.

His hands glow with magic over the plates of Thor’s armor, and he catches himself asking for permission. “May I?”

Thor shakes his head in a jumble and Loki unclasps the plate, removing the front discs and the chest piece. Thor is heaving giant gulps of breath and he is fevered indeed. The skin of his chest and stomach are flushed and it extends up to Thor’s cheeks and ears, and the seidr Loki can nearly feel, thrumming beneath the skin.

Thor shifts once more when Loki presses both hands to the wide dip of his rib cage. The muscles of his stomach ripple and he shuffles breath out his nose in hot gusts and Loki feels his palms go slightly clammy. Strange effects indeed.

Glancing at Thor, Loki sees he is decidedly not looking at him.

He mutters runes quietly to himself, probing Thor’s person with magic so that he may define what it is that he has caused to rampage through his brother. When he skims careless fingers, focused as he is on his task, just over the dip of his belly, Thor shifts once more. Loki lifts his hands enough to not be interrupted, eyes seeing only the runes. He startles when Thor’s hips surge upwards, and the skin of Thor’s stomach rushes forward into the press of his palms.

“Loki,” Thor breathes on a groan. Loki knows that sound, he _knows_.

He swallows hard, mind going bright with all the many wonderful things his new little potion could bring to fruition as he rakes green eyes over the curve of Thor’s body. His pants are tented and Loki smiles.

“Oh, Thor,” he says. Thor makes a sound, deep, choked, and Loki wants to wring it from him.

Perhaps it is the mead still left in his stomach moving him to baser urges, maybe it is the desire to want to know how far his little experiment can be pushed. The truth lies somewhere in between, and Loki bites his bottom lip with the knowledge of it.

Thor’s hand finds his neck when Loki begins to loosen the leather tie lacing the front of his breeks. Thor had long since kicked his boots off, and Loki pushes the cotton down enough to take Thor in hand freely. Thor lets out a moan that Loki could laugh at him for on any other day, but Thor is heavy and hot in his hand, and he can feel the pulse of him even as he begins to stroke.

It’s dry and slow and he watches Thor’s face contort in ways he’s never been privy to knowing. But now he sees, and he is learning, remembering each and every way his brows gather, his eyes flutter, his mouth opens and his tongue works. He recognizes cries of battle twisted into cries of pleasure, and remembers them from when he often walked by any given room or closet Thor could lure a girl into to kiss and bed on any given day years and years ago. He knows Thor and yet he doesn’t.

Thor spills just as Loki has the idea to lick a line from root to tip and take the slick head in his mouth. The reward of Thor’s unhindered moan outweighs the shame of having white drip hot down his cheek and chin.

He grabs Thor’s shirt from the furs on the other side of Thor and wipes his face clean, tossing it to the floor. He watches Thor drift, somewhere between pleasure and sleep, and thinks he should slap him for all the good it did _him_. He’s half hard and still sitting, runes and the taste of salt still fresh on his tongue.

He watches Thor a moment longer, and then blinks.

Then Loki stands and finally takes his leave.

Next time, the mixture would assuredly be much larger, _and_ more potent.


	11. A Walk

Prompt by [wal-martin-freeman](http://wal-martin-freeman.tumblr.com/): " **Avatar AU, Loki as a Na'vi and Thor as the ex marine**. Not sure if youve seen Avatar, I could give more details if you need them. Or a JotunLoki belly dancer AU."

\--

“He called me a child today. Said this world would swallow me up.”

Bruce glanced up from his work at Thor, sitting on the steel table kicking his legs lazily above the bar. Thor kept his head down, thinking of the way Loki’s skin had reflected almost white in the bioluminescence. He had wanted to count every speck of light that marked Loki’s face, his arms.

“You’re new to their world. We all are. Pandora isn’t as friendly a place as we’d hoped when we first came here.” Bruce shrugged but Thor didn’t see. “I’ve been here almost twelve years, seen two new groups ship in and we’ve buried, well…” He sorted the files in a neat stack, the sound of paper meeting steel reverberating through his leg. “You need to keep trying. Fury’s orders.”

“Make friends,” Thor spat, thinking of Fury and his damnable orders. And when he raised his head, Bruce was smiling at him in that complacent way that made him feel small. “I know my orders, Banner.”

Bruce glanced at the thick scar lancing up Thor’s right bicep. Thor caught that at least.

Bruce nodded, smile dying a little. “Good. Good.”

—

“You dislike this war?” Loki asked him that week.

Loki asked a lot of questions, but gave Thor fewer answers. When Thor stumbled into a tree, Loki laughed at him. Thor still wasn’t used to the Na’vi body.

It had been a hasty decision back on Earth, with its clogged air and poisoned water. The world was rotting, so he’d come here. New worlds to see, to touch, to experience. In the end, he didn’t really know why he’d come.

So when his old commanding officer had proposed the chance of a lifetime, he’d taken it with little thought of consequence. They took a blood sample, some hair, some marrow. A handful of tests and then here he was, six years later, still thirty-two and not aged a day, thrust into a new body.

It was strange to say the least.

“I don’t have much stake in it…”

Loki peered at him, fingers tracing over the large ribs of a Sturmbeest…a uh, Talioang as Loki called it. He was cleaning the bones for knives and separating the organs and meat into bundles cradled by large leaves.

Thor huffed. “I wasn’t active when they shipped me off.”

Loki hummed, blue fingers seeking the heart and tugging until it came free. He set it in the palm of a leaf and started on the wayward fat still clinging to bone. “Why not? You are no longer a warrior?”

“Not exactly, I was hurt—”

“If you are a warrior once, then you are always a warrior.” Loki reached forth purple stained fingers, blood, and touched his chest. “You cannot rid yourself of that.”

Thor couldn’t think of what to say. Loki laid his palm flat against Thor’s chest, warm and slick with blood.

“Even if you are wounded.”

“Loki…”

The moment lingered and then Loki raised his hand and slapped Thor on the cheek.

Thor sputtered and Loki was laughing.

—

“Will Laufey move?”

“I haven’t been able to get close enough to propose the idea…”

Fury hummed, frowning. He leaned back against his desk and ticked a finger against his cuff when he crossed his arms. Thor waited.

“We have to make our move in two months, Thor. You know the situation. You got to decide if you’re still with us.”

He thought of Loki and the Hometree and the village he’d been immersed in for the past month. The hunting, the language, the moments when Loki touched him. The laugh that stirred birds from their nests and the fingers that delved for a heart like it was the simplest thing.

Thor wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

“I know.”

—

They walked through the forest that night, Loki pointing out names like Eyaye and Utu mauti and Pamtseowll and Tautral and Loreyu, faster than Thor could manage to absorb them. He did like the Loreyu though, they bounced and receded in a quick spiral as soon as you touched them.

Soon though, Loki’s voice trailed off and they just walked, fingers brushing over flora and Loki only pointing at colossal fruit high in the trees. Thor tried to imagine how much larger they’d be to him as a human, if they were nearly incomprehensible to him even now. They seemed to touch the stars.

“How much do you love this world, Thor?” Loki asked then, in his native tongue. The syllables still sounded too fast for Thor, but he knew what Loki was asking.

He touched Loki’s wrist, and while Loki looked up at the trees, he didn’t respond.

Loki took a step, his braid swaying long and smooth over a shoulder as Loki tilted his head.

“You should not have come here,” he said very softly.

They walked until morning.

It had not taken that long for Thor to know his decision.


	12. First Meeting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: First time they meet.

The first time they met it was on a train and Thor was angry.

The man had sidled between the closing doors and the pole he already clung to with a single hand, balance lurching when the train started up. He wouldn’t have been so annoyed if the stranger had apologized for the way he just knocked into him. He was tall, like Thor, and had a vicious stare. It fed the frustration.

But then the train started up and his back met Thor’s chest and he had to try very hard not to simply push him away. It took a moment to steady themselves but then the man put enough distance between them so Thor could breathe again.

It was packed where they ended up, all headed to different places, stops branching off every thirty minutes. They were by the doors and a rush of frigid air reached through every time they slid open to deposit a landslide of people.

The second stop had even more people filing in than before and again Thor was met with the back of the stranger against him. He didn’t move away. They were close enough that Thor felt fidgety and awkward and wanted to apologize and excuse himself as much as he wanted to just shove the man from him.

He smelled good.

They were pretty much pressed to each other and Thor realized he was practically smelling the guy. He frowned at himself before shuffling his weight from one foot to the other. People were pressed together in uncomfortable situations all around them, staring at the floor, the wall, the passing blur of subway walls. It was normal. Somewhere down the length of the car someone was muttering gibberish to themselves. Normal.

Thor shifted again and then the stranger shifted too. Thor heard a quiet huff of breath from the man, like he was annoyed.

Fine. He could deal. Thor shifted again and his frown deepened.

The train lurched again and though Thor saw his lips part, it was broken by the way the stranger was thrown back into him again. Thor raised a hand to his waist, a reflex because he didn’t want to lose his balance. There was a murmur of dissent amongst the people crammed into their compartment as everyone settled again.

The stranger didn’t move forward. Thor could feel the tickle of dark hair at his nose and cheek and he noticed how he smelled like something cold, airy. Like a field or rain.

The stranger shifted back against him, his shoulders rolling, his hips pressing back and oh. Oh.

Thor tightened the hold he had on his waist.

The stranger craned his neck enough to meet Thor’s eyes and in them Thor saw something like consideration.

“Loki.”

Thor felt his frown challenged in the smirk the other—Loki gave him. Something roiled in his gut and on the next lurch of the train, Loki ground his ass back against Thor and _damn_ if Thor felt like he shouldn’t like it. But, but.

“I’m Thor.”

Loki flashed him a wicked grin. "Hello, Thor."


	13. Trapped

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone thought it funny to lock Thor and Loki together in a cabin.
> 
> Involves a bit of the 'sex-pollen' kink and shameless cuddling for warmth. PWP.

“You lied,” Thor accuses him.

It is a demanding accusation. It is a true accusation. Thunder rolls deep and loud in the skies above the meager roof they find themselves under.

Loki nods and closes his eyes, letting his head fall back to meet the wood paneling.

“Yes, I lied.”

Loki has no idea why they are here.

Thor’s breath is a rush of white fog that clouds his jaw. It’s the only answer Loki receives.

\--

In the morning, Loki tries again.

“That is the seventh try you’ve made for that door,” Thor informs him from his spot on the floor. Loki notices the lack of _brother_ on the end. He always notices.

“And now you will watch my eighth,” Loki says back to him, hands sputtering failed seidr again and again and again.

His magic has been limited and it is the fact he has not the full use of it that keeps his temper held at bay.

If he had but an ounce more, the spectrum of his rage would lay this cabin to smoldering ruin.

\--

They’ve been trapped in a cabin for two days, decrepit with age and rot and crawling with worms and black, shiny insects fit to seek the warmth of your clothes. Loki shoos them all away with a bit of muttering and leaves Thor to the manual task of ridding himself of their nuisance by himself. Loki can do at least this much.

It was Thor’s fault for never taking interest in runes.

Another hour of Thor angrily shoving his hands down his sleeves and pant legs and Loki thinks he will raise Mjolnir next to smite them. He says the words needed and soon the bugs are leaving, driven by unseen desire to seek other lodgings.

Thor huffs at Loki’s small show of seidr. “At least something still works.”

Loki goes to the other side of the small room, turns his back, and sleeps.

\--

“Doom has done this?”

“I should think so. He has been collaborating with Amora or Amora alone has done this. It is a child’s joke.”

“And to think I once enjoyed her.”

Loki barks a harsh laugh. “There was never a moment of what you speak.”

Amora had been his. Amora, with her clever tongue and ruling eyes and words that were once so soothing to hear.

Thor levels Loki a searching glare and takes to pacing the rest of the day.

\--

“There is nothing to eat. Nothing to drink.”

“Thor.”

“And how are we to…remove ourselves?” Loki knows he speaks of the body’s functions, and has himself felt the itch to urinate. But there is nowhere short of claiming a corner. Both of them are neither keen nor yet lacking in pride enough to forsake the small luxury they still have; respite from each other across mere yards of distance.

“Thor,” Loki says again, watching Thor’s eyes fix to the ground and then to the door, over and over.

“I have but to raise Mjolnir and—”

“Thor,” Loki says, firm. Thor stops his pacing. It’s the third day. “No. Whatever they intended by locking us up, we are not understanding it. There must be a reason for so simple a trick.”

“Simple?” Thor laughs. “You cannot even break whatever magic it is holding this place together.”

“And if you were to raise such power against this place, then I can assure you it will do no good.”

“How will we ever know without trying?”

Again there is the echo of a once familiar, fond, _craved_ for endearment but Thor lets his words trail, hanging empty. Unfinished.

“We could die, Thor.”

Thor shakes his head, looks to the door and then back to Loki. He’s quiet for so long, toying with the haft of his hammer that Loki thinks he might just go ahead and do it. Half of Loki wants him to.

“Then what do you suggest, Loki?”

“There is a reason we are here. They know we are at odds. What need have they for forcing us together?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Thor growls.

Thor is furious to be here with Loki and Loki realizes that maybe they won’t manage it. Won’t reign in their anger at each other long enough to solve the riddle.

“We don’t even know if it’s Doom or Amora. It could be someone else entirely.”

The thought gives Thor pause enough for his face to drop, expression more serious than angry.

“We have to remain calm, keep our heads. Else we will fail and either kill each other or die trying to escape.”

Thor laughs weakly. “You are always so dire.” _Brother, just say brother, just say it—_

“It is required.”

Thor shakes his head again, slow. Then he offers the barest of nods.

“Fine. Fine, alright.”

Then Thor sits against the wall and Loki takes it as one would a gift.

\--

“You never say it anymore.” Loki murmurs to the air one night. Thor is across the room, breathing evenly.

“What is that?”

“Brother.”

Thor is silent a long time.

Then, “Why should I humor you?”

Thor falls quiet again and Loki is left to his thoughts.

\--

Loki is pacing now as Thor sleeps on the hard floor, cape tangled about him for warmth.

Then the true cold comes.

It washes over him, leeching through his armor, his clothes, sinking into his skin and making his body tremble before he manages a third step. On the floor, Thor is shaking.

The air is thick with seidr as Loki collapses to the ground beside Thor. Loki takes Thor’s shoulders in both hands and shakes him awake.

Thor’s gaze is sleep-fogged for a moment and his hand comes up to cover Loki’s own but then he remembers who Loki is and all they’ve been through. Loki releases him as soon as recognition plays clear across his sight.

Then Thor notices the cold.

“More magic?” he growls, rubbing at his arms.

“Yes.”

“Coward’s play,” he rumbles.

“Seidr is not a coward’s weapon. It is best used by those who can wield their minds.” Loki scowls down at Thor, who is quiet again. “You have a brain the size of a peanut, so it is no wonder you cannot comprehend just how dangerous it can be.”

“I only meant the nature of this seidr, Loki.”

And it is Thor’s tone that has Loki stilling, dropping his head to meet Thor’s eyes. He looks utterly open and sincere, eyes shining over the expression he wears.

He looks like his brother and Loki cannot stand it.

“I know you can fight as ferociously as the next warrior.”

Loki hums and resumes his pacing.

“Perhaps a little larger than a peanut, then.”

And that has Thor laughing.

\--

It is well into the night when the trembling sets Thor’s teeth to chattering and Loki to rocking on the floor.

Loki’s hands and feet are numb and his ribs ache with each cold breath he forces himself to take. The breath he releases does not warm in the slightest. If anything, it is only a pressure indifferent to the cold. It is better than nothing.

“Can you not at least summon a bit of fire?” Thor asks into the fold of his cape.

Loki shakes his head, too overcome by the sensation of freezing to reply. Thor seems to sense this.

He rears up to sitting and grips Mjolnir, sure in his hand.

They lock eyes and Loki nods.

The hammer lets out a wash of ancient magic and light, tiny electric bolts dashing gentle along the floorboards and Thor’s arm.

Thor concentrates the power in a single spot, trying for something, anything. But it’s not use. It bounces off the flooring as if immune, as if a part of Thor himself.

With an exhausted shout he tosses Mjolnir aside, tumbling heavy and noisy across the floor.

Loki is back to shaking, his tongue locked secure between his teeth to keep them from thrashing too terribly. He is Jotun; it shouldn’t affect him like this. He suspects whoever is casting knows them as they are, and has a specific goal in mind. He suspects they aren’t of Midgard at least.

“Come here,” Thor says. He scoots closer in a movement that would have Loki laughing in any other circumstance.

But Thor is holding his arms apart, trembling, his jaw set in that familiar way of determination and it has Loki thinking of childhood.

Loki shakes his head because he can hardly move. He feels he might shake apart if he so much as shifted.

“Loki.”

Loki rushes out a harsh breath, banging his head upon the floor. His eyes are hurting.

“Brother, please.” Thor’s voice catches.

Loki pushes off the floor, limbs screaming, and they meet halfway.

\--

Thor wraps them both in his cape and Loki buries his face in the bend of Thor’s neck, his numb nose making Thor choke out a shaky laugh. They wrap their arms around each other’s backs and waists and Loki hardly cares how it must seem.

There is warmth here, against Thor’s body and so he wills his trembling heart to calm.

\--

They wake sometime later, still wrapped up in one another. Loki feels the cold creep slow over his legs and waist but there is heat enveloping his chest and face. There is some loophole then, to this magic.

He blinks and there is hot breath shuffling gentle along his cheek. Thor’s mouth is pressed just beside his own and for an insane moment Loki feels he might turn to meet him.

But they only shifted in their sleep and so Loki closes his eyes. Tries to forget.

He cannot.

\--

The next Loki wakes, Thor is nuzzling his neck.

“Thor?”

“I’ve missed you so much.”

Loki tries to push at Thor’s chest. Thoughts are invading his mind and he wants to be rid of them.

“Thor, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Thor’s hands are roaming over his back in broad circles, and his laughter is a carefree rush of air against his neck. It has Loki shivering and a soft sound works its way free of his throat. Thor’s hips roll lazily against his and Loki feels himself returning the motion.

“Thor, _Thor_ —” Loki tries to push at Thor despite the fact he is still insistently rutting against him.

“Missed you so much, brother,” Thor whispers against his collar. His tongue licks at a spot on Loki’s neck, then he closes his lips over it and sucks.

“It’s the seidr. Thor it’s the— _ah—_ ” Loki moans when a hand finds its way beneath the many layers of his coat, working at his pants.

“Even if it is,” Thor says, sucking a second mark above the first. “Even if it is, I’ve thought of you every day. All these years.” Loki gasps as Thor rips a buckle from his coat. “I’ve missed our youth, when we would laugh together. When you did not avoid me when I sought your company.” Loki allows his legs to fall apart when Thor inches his fingers beneath the hem of his pants, curving over pale skin and surging his hips forward. “When you did not cringe as I pulled you to me in a hug.”

“Things are different now, Thor. Too much has happened. You know that.” He pulls at Thor’s hair and mouths at the stubble of his jaw. It’s glorious and rough against his tongue, the taste of musk and salt and storm a heady mix along his skin.

“It has been centuries. I love you no less for the things we’ve done to each other.”

Thor palms at his rear and Loki finds cool air hitting his backside as his pants shift down around his legs. He’s hard, aching, damn him, and rocking his hips into Thor’s and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t.

“You hate me. You hate me, Thor,” Loki chokes out. Thor is mouthing along his ear, the ridge of his cheek. He can feel a smile bloom beside his mouth.

“You convinced yourself of that,” Thor says and kisses him.

It’s a soft pull of lip between two and then Thor’s tongue is snaking inside Loki’s mouth to meet his. It’s wet and his head is swimming with the warmth, but Loki returns each stroke with one of his own. He sucks Thor’s tongue between his lips and Thor lets loose a raw sound so open it has Loki imagining what it would be like to spear his own brother open. What it would be like to taste him as he spilled, heavy and pulsing against his tongue.

He wants it so much then he doesn’t care that it’s the seidr at all. It doesn’t feel like seidr, it does, it doesn’t, it does—

Loki cries out roughly when Thor yanks his cock free, palming him and stroking once, firm and sure. He could spill like this, he could, but he cannot still his hips from rising to meet Thor’s fist.

Loki doesn’t know when Thor freed himself of his own pants, but then it is Thor there, moving against him. He grips them both in a tight fist and groans, long and low into Loki’s open mouth and it’s so good, it’s so good—

Loki winds his fingers tight through Thor’s hair and holds him close, thigh raised to hook over his left leg and urged him yet closer. Thor drives against him like he’s willing Loki to break and maybe he is.

“Brother, brother, Loki,” he whispers, over and over.

“My brother,” Loki cries out as he spills, painting Thor’s chest plate in white streaks. Thor follows him.

Loki realizes what he’s said only moments after he’s said it. But Thor is heavy and warm on top of him and he cannot bring himself to mind the one slip up.

It is true tonight.

\--

The next morning brings Loki’s twentieth attempt at breaking through the door success.

It has Thor going red in the face and Loki laughs to the bright, sunny sky.

Let it not be so carefree when he finds out who sealed it shut with seidr in the first place.


	14. Illness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki is sick and Thor is there for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: AU in which either Thor or Loki is sick with a terminal illness, and they find a way to cope.
> 
> Warnings for: Vague descriptions of the side effects of chemo therapy, cancer. Nothing's too graphic but still.

Loki is flipping channels when Thor comes back into the living room.

He watches Loki, wrapped in a large woolen blanket with his hair up in a loose tie-back. Wayward strands hang by his temples like whispery ink and Thor wants to smooth them back. He hates when his hair hangs in front of his face, it tickles him. Loki doesn’t mind. He never seems to mind.

Thor walks to Loki and takes the controller away. He replaces it with a bowl of steaming chili with too much cheese. Loki always loves to pile it high and complain later that he ate too much. But he needs it.

His sunken eyes find Thor’s and he doesn’t pretend to smile in thanks.

He’s tired.

“Come on, love,” Thor murmurs as he scoots in beside Loki.

He manages to get one thigh under the blanket and press it beside Loki’s before Loki stills and then shifts to do it for him. He maneuvers until both thighs are draped over his lap and Thor can soothe the aching muscles of his calves with steady, plying fingers.

“I can’t find anything to watch,” he complains, reaching for the remote again.

Thor hands it to him. Says, “Did you take your pill?”

“Last for tonight, yeah. Movie or show?”

Thor kneads the tight muscle around an old, long scar and drags his nails through the fine hair that covers his legs. He thinks of the larger scars on Loki’s chest. Loki’s muscle twitches and he huffs into his next bite of chili.

“Movie. Could be something on in twenty minutes.”

Loki nods and Thor lets himself look. He takes in the thin line of a would-be wrinkle on Loki’s forehead that tells of his glaring, his frowning. The way his eyes seem huge for his head and the way his hair looks too light. Too airy. Thor thinks of how it feels to run his fingers through it. He takes in the way Loki is wearing another of his shirts, too baggy by far. But he knows Loki finds comfort in their scent they carry. Loki spoons his chili in and swallows quickly, like he’s starving. He licks his lips again and again.

Thor stares. Loki allows his staring these days. He allows a lot of things.

Thor thinks sometimes that it could have always been like this.

Part of Thor misses the fire of their fights, their arguments and the way Loki would leave for a year and pop up again in Nevada, or Utah, or New York. The way they would kiss when they were finally back together.

He likes how Loki allows his touches, generous and nearly constant as they are. He’s always touching Loki. Holding his wrist. Hand on his lower back. Fingers carding through his thin hair. Lips on his forehead, his cheek, his mouth, the plain of his stomach, and lower. Lower. He loves hugging Loki with Loki’s arms around his neck or his waist in return. He loves the scent of him as he breathes his brother in.

But Thor isn’t stupid.

And neither is Loki.

Loki coughs once, the sound rough and painful to Thor. Thor chooses to ignore it, scoots closer so that he can wrap an arm around Loki’s shoulders. Loki turns his head and spits into his napkin and Thor sees dark red stained there.

He rubs Loki’s back as he coughs again for some time.

“Ugh,” Loki says finally. “I hate that.”

“Come here,” Thor tells him.

Some minutes pass by on the drone of TV static; the buzz of mindless promos and ads before the next movie starts.

Loki sets his food down on the table and sits forward, wordlessly asking what Thor is already moving to provide. He wraps his arm around his brother and pulls him into his lap. The blanket falls loose around their limbs and so Thor gathers it up around them again. It’s hot enough that Thor feels his thighs rub together in his loose shorts but he doesn’t care. Loki likes the warmth.

It’s the middle of summer.

Loki nuzzles his cheek absently, nose skimming his temple, the corner of his eye, down to his jaw. His breath rattles loose and careful in Thor’s ear and it’s something that’s always made his heart ache to hear.

“I start another cycle in two weeks,” Loki says, words soft.

“Yeah. I’ll drive you,” Thor says, and kisses him. Loki smiles weakly into it and sighs after, forehead coming to rest against Thor’s neck. Loki knows Thor will always drive him. It’s what he does.

He does a lot for Loki.

\--

Loki had never taken to nausea well.

Thor places a cold rag against the shine of sweat along Loki’s neck. He’s flushed bright red from his shoulders up and he braces himself against the rim of the toilet. He vomits all he’s eaten that day, including the chili Thor made him only two hours earlier. He grunts and groans and yells curses as if it will empty his stomach faster. Thor will sometimes catch Loki with two fingers down his throat, avoiding the event of camping out in the bathroom later on.

Thor never likes it but he lets it happen. Loki isn’t out to kill himself.

He doesn’t have to.

In the space between Loki’s ragged breathing and vicious lurching, Thor spreads careful fingers over his brother’s forehead and gets his hair out of his face. He ties it back with his a stray tie and sets to wiping the cool cloth over his face.

There’s blood this time and Thor has to bite his lip to keep the quiver hidden.

“You don’t have to do this,” Loki forces out in a whisper. “You don’t have to do any of this.”

“Of course I do. You’re my brother.”

Loki takes a deep breath and meets Thor’s eyes. He nods. Then he’s back to retching.

\--

Its eight hours between floors when they’re back at the hospital in two weeks.

Loki’s sitting with his arm plugged into several machines that whir and buzz in one part of the hospital and Thor is handed a stack of papers in another.

He’s given a sympathetic stare, a nod, a smile that’s too indifferent and fake for him to take as sincere.

He hates the hospital more than his brother does.

He’s told things like _soon_. Like, _arrangements would be wise_. Like, _the cost is_ …

Thor feels like yelling for the first time in years but he doesn’t.

He doesn’t scream his anger over needless things anymore.

Loki would reproach him about it anyway.

\--

That weekend when they’re lying in bed, Loki tucked warm and safe in Thor’s arms—a sentiment Loki would never agree with if Thor thought to voice it—Loki kisses him. He keeps kissing him. Thor returns them.

Loki licks into his mouth and presses a palm against Thor’s heart when he sighs with it.

“Why did we start this, Thor?” he whispers.

Thor swallows an answer and sucks on Loki’s tongue instead.

Loki pushes his thigh between Thor’s and rolls them until he’s lying atop his brother. Thor doesn’t argue, how could he ever? Instead, he wraps his arms around Loki’s waist, roams hands over his back and the curve of his thighs and presses them together.

Loki winds his fingers through Thor’s long hair, gripping his skull and moaning into his ear. Before he wouldn’t have cared to allow himself to, but now he knows Thor likes it. It isn’t such a fault these days, to be made so vulnerable.

Thor catalogues every sound he makes. He wants to remember. He wants to remember everything. He doesn’t want to have to remember anything.

He wants Loki to stay with him. Always.

But Thor isn’t stupid.

And neither is Loki.


	15. Theophany

On cold nights he can catch the scent of him on the air. Something rich, but faint. Something dying, like rotted corrosion at the edges of cement and the wood of long forgotten buildings. Foundations of civilizations long lost weeping for their forsaken foundries. Like a glimpse into what could have been, lost to the wind to crumble.

He sits and waits, rare nights by the fire, sometimes with a beer or a book or nothing at all.

But he never comes home.

\--

He wakes up at five, takes a shower, combs his hair back and into a tie, puts on a lean black mess of Tom Ford and goes to work on an empty stomach. Because eating to thoughts of _him_ more often than not set his stomach to roiling.

The memories are strongest in the morning, just after waking. Clinging to his skin like nothing ever changed. Like he was still here. Like he would open his eyes and have truth to greet him.

But it is a lie and so he wakes, traitorous, dream-clad smile weak, breaking.

Then he goes on with his day.

\--

He knows he was right.

He feels wrong.

Parents tell their children things will work out in the end, that things will be alright.

Sometimes they don’t and they aren’t.

Sometimes they’ll never be.

He hasn’t spoken to his parents in years.

\--

He has friends. He isn’t lonely, not exactly. There is an almost constant strand of chaos around him the moment he gets into his car and drives to work. People driving around him and changing lanes, gravel crunching sinfully as he turns into work and sees the others wave their hellos. The way Sif smiles at him as taps away at her tablet, telling him what they have ahead of them that day. The way Bruce and Tony stop him in the halls to inform him—brag, on Tony’s part— of how well their stock is doing. The way Steve and Fandral and Hogun clack away in their offices as he passes them, Fandral calling a loud greeting.

There is a cacophony of life all around him.

He isn’t alone.

But he sits at his desk and deals with Fury calling meetings, humming his way through conference calls and the hours he spends whittling away the stack of files beside his laptop. He goes through his day, staring at the clean sweep of his desk, thinking how he doesn’t even have a picture of him.

He isn’t alone but he feels like he is.

\--

He goes home and everything else dies. The moment his door clicks shut, the moment he turns the lock and takes his next breath, peace descends. Silence. Nothing.

He would worship the solitude of his home if it did anything but remind him of what he ruined.

\--

He works out. He has a home gym, worth far too much money, but it’s his own and he doesn’t have to wait thirty minutes for someone else to finish doing a set of reps with far too much grunting and groaning and filth.

He had a professor in college who always lamented about his knee, because he used to run all the time and he was too injured to do it anymore. Running was his escape, his professor’s peacetime, his meandering route from war and maybe, he thought, it could be like that for him too.

So he runs a lot now. He lifts only enough so his arms still slide through the arms of his suits without bunching inappropriately. He drives himself to hunger and exhaustion.

He eats a small feast every night and passes out to empty dreams.

It’s worth the burning in his limbs.

\--

He feels he understands humanity a little more each time his head hits his pillow.

But sometimes the dreams still slip through and they aren’t exactly dreams, nor are they truly nightmares.

They’re memories.

He wakes up heaving and trembling after each time and it’s not worth it, it never was, never at all.

\--

Smiles full of teeth and tongue and eyes large and bright and scheming.

Hair swept wild in the wind and clothes pricked with the pollen of forests and the seeds of trees.

Fingers curled over his breast and words trilling soft in his ear, whispering lovely things of better times.

Things like _brother_ and _mine_ and _more_.

\--

He’s forgotten his face but he still sees him in sleep. Slightly blurred at the edges and shifting like shadow, but he’s there, he’s there.

It is why he wakes early in the morning. It is why he still wakes at all.

He’s forgotten what to say, what can be said. He will never have the chance to see him again.

He made a mistake, but he knows it was still the right choice.

He has to believe that.

He never was the better liar.


	16. What War Demands

Thor clashes with the others, fists sharp and drawing pained grunts out of the jaws that are there to meet them. He fights with teeth bared, throat strained, hair wild and matted. The lightning is a veil where he steps and those he next lays eyes on are fit paralyze, bathed in light soon swamped by the shadow of his brother.

And Loki watches with some sort of fascination for his brother is ever an artist in the paint of death. The grey viscera and the tangle of corded gore sail about his form as if a painter had taken to their brush, painting the very air.

Loki has seen those hands work. At the lives of others. At the pleasure that can be summoned between the sweat of thighs tucked beneath blankets.

Loki watches him and it is like holding the heart of a god in his hand, poised and beating.

\--

Thor steals kisses as he steals biscuits from the kitchens. He makes the cooks grin and blush and chide him as he charms his way through two extra meals a day, at least. He shares the wine he sneaks into the slopes of his shirtsleeves with Loki.

“I enjoy seeing your cheeks flush with drink,” Thor tells him.

Loki grins and reaches for more cheese.

He enjoys their nights spent in something akin to friendship.

He enjoys it because he knows it is a lie.

And Thor so rarely offers those to him.

\--

The night drags on and the teasing and the feasting fade to give way to the furs being thrown down and the clasps of belts undone. Loki is left breathing hot air into the bend of Thor’s thick neck with his hands woven tight into his hair. He curses Thor for how well he can bring him to the height of Valhalla itself simply by twisting and pressing his thumb through the slit of his erection; the way he licks and nips at the skin of Loki’s chest and belly to wrap tight lips about the head and suck Loki down like Thor’s mouth had never been meant for any other use.

Loki is alright with that.

\--

And it is so very like the heart of a beast. This heart he holds so close to his chest, the one he wraps his arms around at night, secreted away by dreams painted with memories darker each than the last. The heart of a god of any kind is a burden to be borne with careful fingers.

Thor told him once it was like being crushed to a wall, for all the strength Loki clung to him with in the night.

Loki often chases Thor’s wandering thoughts with well placed lips and eyes shut, so that he might give nothing away.

\--

Should he fail, should his fingers shake and his arms tremble and his strength fade to the dust of ancient bones left in forgotten cities, than Thor will no longer be his.

It is the only thought that frightens Loki and so he never speaks it.

Not even to himself.

\--

Thor once asks him, “Please, I would see you. As you are.”

Loki stills. “I cannot.”

Thor must see the shock in his eyes. “I would touch. Trail hot fingers down your neck, over your heart.” He leans close and Loki’s breath grows short. “I would touch you yet, spread the wet of your slit over your thighs and lick you clean.”

Loki shudders out a startled breath, thoughts laden with imaginings. Thor rarely speaks like this. It is intoxicating.

That Thor would touch him, in his Jotun form. That he would dare to lay eyes on the mess of Loki’s heritage hidden behind Odin’s clever, strong seidr. That Thor would even think of—

“No,” Loki says.

Because it is a lie.

And though Thor’s face falls, for all that he seems saddened and now _shy_ of all the many things he should be—Loki does not relent, he does not retrieve his words in regret.

That Thor should love him so much is the most charming sort of lie his brother has learned yet and Loki wishes not to see how far Thor would reap his winnings.

For Loki knows just what the result of a lie can cause, and he knows how it is to glory in the ruin of another.

For this is the heart of a god in his hands. He is not through with the result he’s earned.

Refusing Thor is simply another step in the long process of breaking him.

Thor will not go on forever, following his foolish heart. He could not possibly outlive Loki in a lie.

\--

Thor wraps arms about his waist that night and neither find sleep. They remain silent, but wary of the other.

Thor leaves on another trip to Jotunheim in the morning. War demands scouting after all.

And Thor will return to him covered in the blood of others, smelling of storm and fury. And should he return painted in his own, Loki will stitch his wounds closed, humming the wordless might of seidr to weave delicately through his brother’s skin so that he might be better protected on his next trip. And then they will lie with each other, eyes never closing, skin pressed together with sweat and the salt of seed, mouths meeting to whisper broken lies into the ears of the one with cries stuck in their throat.

And they will keep continuing on, until one of them breaks. Until Thor stops and gives in to his own lie. Or until Loki breaks him.

Loki’s fingers quake against his own heart and he feels Thor breathe him in.


	17. First Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by [takemetothedungeons](http://takemetothedungeons.tumblr.com/): Hii :) can I prompt human AU first kiss? Maybe at the end of some cheesy date, like on top of the Eiffel tower or on paradise island beach :D

It happens slow.

It happens in that Loki knows what he couldn't before place.

Loki thinks Thor is hesitating. With him, with himself.

Loki’s bent Thor over a handful of times and Thor’s had Loki squeezing his thighs, urging him deeper, a number of times over the distance of three countries. They’ve seen Nepal, London, America—though only the east coast, it was too loud and they both missed Europe—and are currently flying on their way to France.

They’ve not kissed.

The closest they got was Thor skimming his lips over the jut of Loki’s jaw and it was when Loki was pressed, face first, down into a bundle of sheets, their hips slapping together. It had only been the second time.

And Loki had been so caught up, had been so distracted by the stretch of Thor inside him that he’d nearly missed it.

After, Loki had told him never again.

They weren’t like that. They would never be.

This, it wasn’t a _thing_.

They travelled together because it was lighter on their pockets to share expenses and easier wringing pleasure from skin they’ve both known for years, rather than seeking out a stranger. Or, forbid, dating someone else—

But that’s always when Loki shuts down and goes quiet and gives Thor nothing but silence to work out his thoughts. It always makes him feel sick to think of Thor with someone else. Someone like Sif. Like Jane. The fact Thor still spoke to either of them, was still friends with them, sat rancid inside him.

But why should he be jealous?

What claim did he have?

Thor wasn’t his.

This was a temporary arrangement.

Loki just didn’t know how long ‘temporary’ exactly was.

\--

They’re not really brothers.

It had been Loki finding out and threatening to leave—loudly and recklessly—that encouraged their sudden trip in the first place.

Thor had been sobbing, words weakly filtering out through his tears. He’d been distraught and the sudden change in Thor had Loki panicked. Panicked on top of the sudden realization he’d been lied to all his life.

Thor had embraced him and wept into his neck, arms tight and unrelenting around Loki’s middle.

Loki hadn’t any other choice but to say, “Fine, then come with me.”

He would have said anything to stop Thor from crying. It wasn’t like Thor. Not at all.

It was the first and last time he’d ever seen Thor cry.

He would make sure it would be the last.

\--

Loki wasn’t so cruel.

But he knew, somewhere in the anxious tick ever lingering beneath his skin, his fingers, his thoughts, that it was there. That it was an entirely plausible other reality. One he could render complete and true any moment with only a handful of words.

And he’d known this, been made fully aware when he’d gone to Thor after their third night in Nepal, intent on leaving—alone—but had ended up swinging his leg over Thor’s thighs and hugging his head close as he rocked his hips forward.

Thor had trouble catching his breath, but his hands, his fingers digging into Loki’s sides, had him coming in his jeans in only a few short minutes. Thor had only smiled up at him, eyes wary. Loki ignored the disturbing look to crawl down his body, push him flat on his back, and take his cock into his mouth.

Thor tasted like he smelled; sweat, salt, like the sea, like something vague and deep and something that flooded through him, overwhelming. Something Loki couldn’t name.

It was easier after that, for them both.

\--

And Loki thought it would be crossing a line. A line they’d never properly erected in the first place. The line that had been severed and sewn over again and again when Loki found out he was adopted from one of Odin’s failed relationships on the side, before he’d married Frigga.

Lines that had been blurred when he was sixteen, Thor his junior only by a scant year, and Loki found out his brother was difficult to look at just after leaving the shower in only a towel.

Lines he’d carried and repeated to himself for over a decade. Lines he’d kept secret.

Lines Thor hadn’t bothered to disprove or agree with, in effect had actually quite effortlessly ignored. He clutched Loki to him, lips always skimming over warm skin, always avoiding his mouth, but earnest all the while.

The one line that could destroy them Loki had managed to voice. The only line that mattered anymore, for who they were, what they were.

But each time he felt Thor gasp in sobbed air after he buried himself a final time inside Loki—each time he sighs Loki’s name, or still calls him brother, or—

Each time Loki feels his strength slipping. Feels his eyes trail slow, lazy to Thor’s mouth when he isn’t watching.

He’s becoming weak, he’s slipping, and his dreams are filled with simple touches instead of the intensity they so partake of each other in reality.

\--

They’d gone to Nepal first only because Loki needed to get away. As far away as he was able. One his own, he’d only been able to afford a ticket to London, but Thor had had a job for several years at that point—something part time and easy to get vacation time off—and said his share was Loki’s if only he’d have it. It hadn’t taken a moment’s hesitation. He’d give Loki everything.

Even if it meant financial ruin, loss of respect within their family, the severance of bonds forged since birth—in Thor’s case. Thor would still risk it. He would lose anything and everything to keep Loki with him.

That’s what scared Loki.

That was the cement foundry beneath his only line.

\--

 

They’d gone to London next, because even though it was closer to what Loki had called home for the majority of his life, he’d still wanted to see it ever since he’d been a kid. The smog in the skies was nothing compared to their short journey through part of the far east and so they headed to America next. Thor liked the food and Loki liked the clubs. But he’d gotten back too late, too drunk, and too bloodied and bruised for Thor to cling to the fantasy of staying any longer than needed.

They’d left to France the night before, Loki’s face still bruised from a bar fight two nights before. It was almost dawn and they had a few more hours to go before they’d touch down.

Thor is asleep, his head on Loki’s shoulder.

Loki lets his eyes close and swallows hard.

\--

“It’s kind of cliché.”

“No it’s not. A lot of people go there for a reason, it’s supposed to be spectacular.”

“That’s a big word for you,” Loki smirks.

Thor just glares at him. He nudges Loki’s arm with his own and gestures with wide arms towards the towering spire in the distance.

“It will be great. Trust me.”

“You’re dead set on this aren’t you? You haven’t shut up about it since last night.”

Thor’s cheeks go red and Loki raises an eyebrow. He wonders what Thor is so hooked on. It’s just the Eiffel Tower. They have Skåne and its flowing fields of vibrant, almost blinding colors. They have Storkyrkan, Ericsson’s Globe. They have countless attractions they see in everyday life, just as anyone who lives anywhere with a notable tourism traffic does. It shouldn’t be exciting.

“You’re a tourist, Thor. It’s shameful.”

Thor just chuckles. He pulls Loki close and bumps his forehead against Loki’s temple.

His lips are at Loki’s ear before he can shove him away.

“Come now, brother, it will be a lovely sight from the top. How can you deny me that?”

“How can you think to force me into anything after the shock I went through at the start of all this?”

At that Thor releases Loki and lets out a loud laugh, deep, from his gut. He shakes his head when Loki pushes at him halfheartedly, his laughter dying down.

“You always enjoy sightseeing. You will like it.”

Loki bites his lower lip but he already knows he’s given in as soon as Thor cracks a smile.

\--

It’s a long way up, and the lift is packed with Americans, and Loki feels caged in. There’s a terrible shiver raking down his spine just as Thor sighs beside him and shifts his weight. When he looks over, Thor is glancing at the ground, and back up, again and again. He’s anxious.

Loki can’t fathom why. He doesn’t recall Thor having any fear of heights. His shiver passes and he finds his own annoyance fading the longer he observes Thor, trying to piece him out.

\--

When they reach the top, Loki immediately takes Thor’s arm and drags him in the direction opposite the lift. The people filter out in all directions, but they’re the only two who loop back around, gazing over the city.

Thor is still jittery in his hold, and when he lets go, Thor grabs up his own hand to rub his palms together.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Thor seems surprised Loki noticed. “I think I’m only tired from the long flight, nothing more.”

“Then why are we even up here?” Loki asks, exasperated.

Thor doesn’t meet his eyes. He walks past him and goes to an empty spot at the railing, the closest he can get to the edge of the tower.

Loki follows after him, if only because he’s frustrated and wants an answer. It doesn’t have anything to do with the way the afternoon light plays out over the far stretching city, the glittering rooftops and windows flickering to life with families settling down for the evening.

Thor notices him staring. “It’s lovely, just as I thought.”

Loki shrugs, not having the energy for words.

Thor’s hand finds his elbow and though he eyes Thor as his brother sidles up close beside him, he allows it. Thor hugs his arm tight to his chest and his gaze is soft, warm. He’s stopped fidgeting and Loki feels himself relaxing into it.

“Thor.”

“Hm?” Thor seems distracted.

Loki just turns his head and watches him. Thor is scanning the rooftops, eyes flicking back and forth restlessly. He’s chewing his lower lip mindlessly and Loki nudges him slightly.

“What is this?” he asks softly.

Thor just smiles briefly, a flicker, shy. He glances at Loki and leans close and before Loki can process just what Thor is doing, they’re kissing.

Just a soft press of lips, just once. Then Thor is retreating and Loki feels like jumping. Because he has too much air in his lungs all at once and Thor is flushed, eyes trained on Loki’s lips. Loki’s breath leaves in sharp little rasps and Thor licks his lips.

Loki drops his gaze from Thor’s eyes to his mouth and leans forward to take Thor’s bottom lip between his own. He sucks and Thor’s hand tightens around where he holds Loki’s against his chest. He sighs when Loki releases him and chases his lips with his tongue.

Loki breathes him in and he can taste the sea.

He feels like he’s home and somehow it’s the easiest thing to name.


	18. Strikhedonia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt meme: "Strikhedonia- Thorki. Because we all know they are both a little reckless in their own way."

Thor’s just turned seventeen and Loki isn’t far behind. They’re staring down a chasm filled with boiling dark and deafened things.

They shine coins reflected off the sun into the pit, and Loki wonders if maybe the prisoners can see the tiny columns of light so far down. It’s almost like they’re buried and locked away at the center of their realm, forced to watch rock churn hotly around diamond.

“I wonder who’s down there,” Thor says.

It’s the tone Thor uses when he’s already decided to do something but Loki plays along anyway, the ever suffering younger brother.

“Father will have your head on a platter for dinner. You know we aren’t allowed down there. No one is.”

“They say there are sorcerers locked away down there. Men and women both. They say shadows leap to the hands of monsters and that they drink blood.”

“I remember the stories. And really, are you still so childish as to believe them?”

Thor throws him a glare. “But don’t you want to see for yourself?”

Loki swallows thickly. It takes too long for him to shake his head, no. Thor notices.

His golden older brother is grinning and wrapping him in strong arms before he can step out of reach.

“Please, Loki?” Loki frowns so Thor rubs their noses together. It makes Loki’s face flush hot.

“Thor, stop.”

Thor lowers his voice but not his arms. They both know they’re alone here.

“I’ll give you a kiss if you venture down there with me, brother.”

Loki squirms in Thor’s hold until he’s finally released. He shoves at Thor’s chest.

“That isn’t funny and you know it.”

“Then what shall I trade for you to accompany me?”

Loki has a thousand ideas swimming through his thoughts but he has to bite his tongue from naming any one of them.

Thor pouts and his lashes cast long shadows over his full cheeks as he uses his best charm to try and guilt Loki into going with him.

But Thor already decided their course and he’s merely suffering the part he must play.

“More than one kiss, surely,” Loki mutters.

Thor beams at him then, kisses him full on the mouth and then pulls away. He has Loki’s wrist in a hand and he’s dragging Loki along as he rushes to his room, surely to don his armor and grab his sword.

Loki thinks it is a fair trade. He wants to know the secrets of that dark place just as much as Thor.

And besides, it serves well to be a little reckless now and again.


	19. Brontide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt meme: "goldenlikeyourheart inquired: ~ brontide (thorki)"

It’s only the third time they’ve lain together. Thor’s never heard Loki make such sounds and he finds they’re addicting. Full-throated, breathy things that leap from the pale column of his neck as Thor nips at it. Sighs and moans and curses pouring like milk from his tongue and Thor is overwhelmed with the decision to either taste the words straight from his mouth or to encourage more words in other ways.

He chooses the latter.

Loki’s hands wind through his hair, nails scraping delicious across his scalp as his hips thrust forward. His cock shifts against the valley between his pectorals and it’s something new for them. Thor likes being able to purse his lips and be greeted with a smooth-skinned kiss with each rise of Loki’s pelvis, every hot breath that rolls over his chest and belly to meet his face.

It’s raining and through his kitchen window he can see the flash of lightning. Thunder shakes the sky apart and it has Loki grinding harder against him. Thor loves it. Thor wants more of it.

Loki doesn’t cower. He isn’t a carrier of fear of such natural things and Thor finds he adores that about Loki. Loki moves lithely, spirited, face flushed and hands digging into Thor’s scalp, cries rising each time Thor takes his cock a little deeper into his mouth—and it’s wonderful.

Each rolling burst of thunder, Loki comes a little more undone, and Thor can’t wait for the storm.


	20. Petrichor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt meme: "Thorki - Petrichor"

Thor always makes it rain.

When he’s sad. When he’s nervous. When he’s afraid.

He only had to sniff the air to know if rain was coming. Only had to open his shutters and peek his head out to catch the scent of ripe soil and rejuvenating plantlife to know his brother was weeping somewhere.

The last hasn’t happened since they were boys, but Loki can always tell Thor’s mood by how overcast a day is. He can see his brother’s eyes reflected in the clouds and thinks it’s a good day if there are none.

They would lie on their backs and pick out shapes as children, Thor’s bird-like laughter trilling cheerful up into the air around them. Loki knew if there were bright, white clouds in an achingly blue sky, then his brother was the happiest he could be.

He thinks Midgard is different. He thinks Midgard rains too much. That Midgard favors fog and wind and hail. He thinks it’s a harsh realm when he first stays to reek havoc on his brother’s little team, but it’s really only when he’s fighting Thor that the weather is bad.

Those first weeks were constant. They barely slept. They bled more than bathed. Thor wept more tears, silent as his wordless command of the lightning, than they blinked.

He can smell rain on the air and he thinks of his brother.

But that was decades ago and Midgard’s skies are clear.


	21. Indulgence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Loki admiring and stroking thor's face while he's sleeping.

Loki waits until Thor is asleep and then he feels restless, like every other night. Every other morning. This is the only time he has to indulge.

Thor breathes heavily, like always. Thor is a heavy sleeper. Once, Loki rolled on top of him and waited, staring down at his eyelids but Thor just kept sleeping. The next he tried waking him was a light slap on the cheek and Thor just snorted and rolled over. Then the idea slipped into his head.

Thor is beautiful.

Loki forgets that sometimes.

So he indulges in something he’ll never let Thor be privy to.

He touches Thor’s face. Feels the skin stretch and pull delicately over bone and take in the way his eyes roll beneath the lids, the heat of his breath fanning steady over Loki’s wrists.

Loki traces over regal brow, flattens his thumbs over the curved bridge of his nose, the smoothness of his cheeks. He grazes feather light pads of fingers over Thor’s stubble-lined jaw and the soft dip just beneath, leading to his neck. The babyfat that still insisted on clinging to his brother.

Loki saves Thor’s lips for last, letting one thumb trail slow over each, again and again, until Thor begins to stir. His breath hitches and Loki finally leans in to taste.

Thor is beautiful, but he mustn’t ever know that Loki thinks that.

It would rob him of his indulgence.

It would shatter the illusion that Loki can do this forever.


	22. Balance Enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The boys tell Frigga about their relationship for the first time. It's super awkward!

They’re naked in bed when Frigga finds them.

Loki’s face is tucked into the curve of Thor’s underarm and Thor is asleep. Loki fancies the days that are safe enough they can sleep in, pressed close and locked away, safe from prying eyes. Loki always wards them.

But their mother is another matter. Loki always had seidr in his blood, dancing at the tips of his fingers, but it was Frigga who taught him to shape it to his needs. A sealed door and a ward are nothing to her, if she wanted to see her shining son.

On this day, she had need of Thor, enough so that she would undo the magic lacing his threshold.

But Thor is asleep and it is Loki who is awake to meet her eyes across the room, frightened and hands wound tight, frozen in the sheets and across Thor’s chest. His thigh is blatantly thrown over Thor’s and they hadn’t bothered with sheets. He is grateful they are both at least hidden away from her gaze, the indignity of such a discovery lessened somehow by that.

His heart is thundering and he is sure he is jostling Thor with his heaving breaths, his panicked heart.

But she surprises Loki. She smiles.

“Let Thor know he is needed in the warroom by sundown.”

Then she leaves, shutting the door quietly behind her.

He wants to apologize, to leap to his feet and call his armor to him, anything to defend him this massive insult he has dealt to her golden son. Her years spent mothering them both, only to find them in a single bed, skin still smeared in spend and hair mussed from tugging.

Loki is ashamed.

It is two hours later when Thor awakes and Loki has not moved an inch.

The only difference is that he has reclaimed control of his breathing and his thoughts have wound around impossibilities. Thoughts that tell him she would know something was off from the way his door was sealed with seidr and not in need of only a key. That she would find not only Thor in that room.

That she would of course recognize the Jotun brand of seidr she’d helped shape over centuries.

Dark, shameful thoughts and his eyes ache with them.

—

Thor kisses him slowly when he wakes, just behind his ear, and he has to stifle his hasty breath. Thor presses tighter to Loki, wrapping him in warm arms, and soon enough Loki allows himself to relax into it.

“Good morn, brother,” Thor whispers into his hair. Loki feels warmth surge through his chest, too quickly chilled by the thoughts still rushing through his head.

That if Frigga wanted him dead, Odin would have merely entered the room and leveled Gungnir with his eyes. That if Odin knew, Loki wouldn’t be privy to his thoughts right now.

And so, as Thor rolls atop Loki and slides into his heat, Loki allows his legs to fall apart, thighs rising on either side of Thor to pull him deeper. Thor’s fingers wind into his hair and he’s so slow about it all it has Loki soaking the sheets beneath them.

Loki winds a fist about his own cock and spends across Thor’s chest. But Thor is insistent in his thrusts and he does not stop, he keeps on at the same languid pace.

Loki gives in and lets Thor overwhelm his darker, fear-tinged thoughts.

Thor is whispering soothing things against his temple, his hair, his mouth, and it has Loki wondering.

—

After, Loki lets his arm fall back across Thor’s chest and Thor’s arms come around him almost immediately.

“Something troubles you.”

Loki swallows and closes his eyes. Feigning tired peace in place of the anxiety gnawing away at him.

“Why do you think that?”

“Your eyes shined as I kissed you. And you gripped me tight as if you thought I would flee at any moment from your warmth.”

Thor rolls and Loki is left with his arm draped across Thor’s neck. Thor bumps his nose against Loki’s and winds a hand through his hair.

“I know when my brother is troubled.”

Loki swallows, lips parting to form words. But nothing comes out and Thor is waiting.

A thumb grazes his cheek and it’s so familiar it finally has the words leaving his throat.

“Frigga saw us,” he says, voice rough. He clears his throat and says, “She specifically undid my seidr to enter your room.”

Thor’s eyes are wide, and then there is a long draw of breath fanning across his face.

“She has foresight. Surely she must have known, at some point.”

Loki had not thought of that.

“So why would she continue to let her Jotun falsehood remain in your bed?”

“Loki,” Thor scolds. His grip is firm where he embraces Loki’s neck. “You know she loves you just as she does me. She is our mother, no matter Odin’s schemes.”

Loki huffs and shoves at Thor but Thor only smiles and shoves him back. Soon enough Thor presses forward and Loki traps his tongue with teasing teeth. He rolls atop Thor and Thor soon must swallow his cries.

Loki forgets for a while, and he thinks that Thor must too.

—

They go about their day.

Thor leaves to discuss routes of trade and plans of attack should Jotunheim indeed find a way to follow through with the threats they make each turning of their rotten sun.

Loki stays confined to his rooms.

Frigga finds him soon enough and he hasn’t the heart to lock her out. She would find a way to undo the sealing besides.

He drops to his knees before her, head hung low.

“Do not punish him for what I have done. Do not bring such shame to light. Shame me if you must. Punish me. It is my scheming and my lies alone that brought him to such a state so there is no need to burden Thor with what is due to me.”

Frigga is silent a long while. Loki can see only the hem of her flowing skirts and the sheathe she wears at her hip, the very end bobbing with her shifting of weight from foot to the other.

Then he sees tears dot the floor just before him and he does not understand.

Frigga kneels and her hands are on Loki’s face, raising his sight to hers. She is crying, silently, but her eyes and mouth are kind. She is not weeping for sadness and Loki doesn’t understand it at all.

“My silly boy.”

He finds himself in her embrace and he can do nothing but return it. His eyes are wet and his heart is pounding.

“I had hoped one day you would find peace with each other. That you are happy together is merely a wonderful occurrence. How could you expect a mother such as I to condemn you for such a thing?”

“It is shameful. It is almost _Vanir_!”

Frigga’s laughter shakes him. “The Vanir recognize love as something that crosses all boundaries. I would be a fool to condemn those who I have come to consider my people alongside Asgard’s.”

“It is _sick!_ ”

Frigga’s arms are strong around him. As much holding him in place as keeping him from collapsing to the floor.

“It is as the Norns will it. And all those in the cosmos are subject to their wisdom.”

Loki is weeping now and Frigga is wiping his cheeks with her thumbs.

“I am no more—no more than a Jotun castoff. I am the creature your son is fending off in hoards worlds away.”

“But you are also who I call son. And who Thor calls brother with great love in his heart, and his eyes. Are you so eager to throw away such loving titles?”

Loki cannot speak.

Frigga kisses his forehead and he finally closes his eyes.

“Odin will kill me. He will slit my throat and Thor will be—”

Frigga _tuts_ , pinches his ear softly.

“Odin is King of realms with burdens far more vast than his sons sharing a bed.” Loki grimaces and Frigga moves to smoothing her fingers through his hair. “His duty above all else is to ensure the realms have balance. That we do not fall into void. That the worlds do not succumb to Ragnarok before its time.”

Loki is shaking his head, too at a loss for words. He feels he will never recover.

There is another hand that lights upon his head and when he looks up it is Thor. He realizes that Thor must have been listening in the doorway.

Frigga grabs her sons’ hands and squeezes their fingers with a soft smile.

“That you have found happiness in each other is balance enough.”

Thor’s hand finds his neck, and Loki feels he can breathe.


	23. The Seventh Day

It’s been a week and Thor still lies in the bed, chest rising slowly, limbs shackled with something far too close to lifelessness.

Loki sits there for the seventh day and waits for Thor to open his eyes.

He’s too hurt, his left lung collapsed, the ribs broken, the neck—

The doctors say a lot of things.

Even now, in the hallway where Odin stood tight-lipped and soundless over an hour ago, they still speak to each other. Muttering halflings of speech that Loki cannot distinguish but knows all is equally as depressing.

He sits there and watches Thor breathe on a machine, mouth forced open by a tube and skin dry and patchy in certain places where the cuts were still healing.

Car accident. So much blood.

Loki sits there and waits, knowing if he closes his eyes the truth he knows will be made too real.

Here, now, he can delay for a while and wait.


	24. Pillars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Egyptian AU where Thor is the prince and Loki is the jotun slave that serves him, but Thor has decided he no longer wants loki as his slave but something more.

It was on this day Thor learned he was to be made pharaoh. It was on this day he was to choose a wife, and take any consort he saw fit to touch.

It had always been difficult for Thor to look directly upon the slaves. To witness their labor, their suffering. Often it was Balder dragging him around the sands surrounding kingdom to gaze upon the construction, the massive cityscapes wrought with pure human will. He once caught Balder throwing a handful of sand at a woman bent double with age and toil, and he had never been so angry as that day. He had scolded Balder in private, his hand bearing a red lash for weeks. Balder was kinder now. Thor was appalled.

Odin and he differed on many a thing, and this was no different. From a young age he had seen slaves whipped or beaten or starved, and it was difficult for his child’s mind to grasp the concept of why. Thor knew it was normal, it was as life has always been and always will be. Yet still he winced and grimaced some days. It plagued his dreams, especially the day with Balder.

They were simply slaves, he knew this.

Jotun, his family and father’s peers would call them. Soon to be his peers. He was curious as to what they’d first say if he were ever to speak his most private thoughts. But there is a reason he is pharaoh’s son, Odin’s son. And there is a reason he has earned the right to carry the hammer at his hip, slim and short handled, heavy for the small thing it is. A symbol of growth and power, and a threat that he was next to rule, to cross.

Though Frigga always counseled he keep his gentle heart intact, Thor also had a temper. The Jotun people who served their kingdom knew this.

It was this day he returned to his rooms. To Loki. His slave.

-

Loki stood clad in a white wrap of thin linen, pale skin damp from the heat and having to run around all day carrying out tasks. He was Thor’s servant, picked at random from a slave driver passing through on the week of Thor’s name day some years past.

No, not quite so random. Thor had seen challenge in those viper green eyes, and when Loki had melded back into the crowd, giving Thor his back, Thor had no thought of anyone else. Loki had been but a boy then, Thor not too much older, though already in the realm of adulthood.

His hands won’t keep still and Loki notices. “What troubles you, prince?”

Thor swallows, nerves making his arms and fingers twitch. “I am to choose a wife. Today. My father has named me ready for the title of pharaoh.”

Loki’s brows raise high, his mouth in a quirk of amusement. “There has been no mention of such a celebration,” he voices casually, boldly.

It had been like this for some time. There had been forged between them some easy bypass of class. But only ever in Thor’s private chambers are these things expressed openly. Even then, now, it is half hidden, and Thor often wishes to pull it free into the open air between them.

Thor fingers the smooth surface of a pillar near him. Loki is folding linens the color of gold. “It will not be made public for some time. I am to simply name a woman by nightfall. When the first star is brightest.”

Loki only hums and keeps folding. Thor wants to tug his arm, turn Loki around and untuck what little cloth hangs at his hips, shove him upon his bed. But he doesn’t, and his mind twists and his stomach lurches at who he could wed.

“There is Freyja.”

Thor scoffs. “Her brother would murder me.” He sits on the stone floor, back against the carved pillar, watching Loki work.

Loki does not look at him. “There is Hild.”

“Too wide for my bed.” He smiles at his own joke and looks to catch Loki’s own, expecting it to come easily. But it does not and Loki remains resolute, focused.

“Sif. She is a fine woman.”

“Loki,” Thor starts.

Loki blinks and, realizing what he has said, turns and kneels low. Thor worries his lip between teeth, suddenly quite anxious.

“Forgive me, Thor. Master.”

“You know I hate when you call me that,” Thor says, very quiet.

Loki chances a glance towards Thor and Thor motions for him to join him. It takes Loki long minutes to move beside where Thor sits. Their shoulders touch.

“You are right, she is a very fine woman. Strong, stronger than any other maid I’ve seen.” Thor feels Loki shift beside him, and presses his shoulder more firmly to his, stilling him. “To be quite honest she was one of my first choices.”

“Either way,” Loki says, tone distant, edged in something Thor would call disgust, for he knows the tone well from Loki’s mouth. “She will have no choice in the matter.”

“She will be a queen, I think she will be happy enough.”

Loki sighs very softly, but Thor angles his head anyway, trying to draw Loki’s attention to him. “I am to take a consort as well, if I wish. There have already been lines brought up…”

Loki barks a harsh, cruel laugh, and then he is standing, heading back to his work. Thor knows he is thinking of that day Thor named him and him alone his one slave, simply for having the mind to turn his back to a future king. That he is lucky to be alive.

“You are a disgusting people. It seems it does not matter who you will make a slave.” And if Thor hadn’t been focused entirely on Loki, on watching his the way his lips pressed in a tense line as he worked, he never would have caught it.

Thor stands, nearing Loki. He comes so close, he is so angry in that moment, that he can feel Loki go still before him. His hair hangs dark and loose over his back, and Thor can smell him.

“Perhaps,” Thor says, and he brings a hand up and smooths Loki’s hair over one shoulder, baring the long line of his neck to Thor. Loki angles his head back, only slightly, ceasing his work. “But there is only one I have heard called slave that I have wanted.” His breath is hot against Loki’s neck and Loki shuffles out a harsh breath from it. “And if I am to name him once more, than I shall.”

“Thor,” Loki starts, then stops when Thor presses his lips to his neck, tasting the salt of his sweat. “ _Thor_.”

“For I know once will be all that is needed.”


End file.
